Dedicated servers still require staff to maintain. If you’re just comparing EC2, dedicated servers may be cheaper. Once you get to application offerings, such as databases, caching, etc., you now need to weigh the cost of administering those applications directly.
That’s just for one location. If you need redundancy, you’ll also need to factor in those costs. Alternatively, I can spin up a multi-AZ database in a few minutes on a cloud provider.
I have found AWS services not to be maintenance free. And I think at least for some services, the required maintenance is greatly overstated. Especially in the age of pre-built containers where updating can literally consist of changing the version tag.
That’s just for one location. If you need redundancy, you’ll also need to factor in those costs. Alternatively, I can spin up a multi-AZ database in a few minutes on a cloud provider.